Day after disengagement

We talk much about our military but do not put our national wallet where our mouth is. While nobody is saying we double our defence spending, the current declining trend must be reversed

- SHEKHAR GUPTA

The India-China LAC disengagement is both a major step forward in the assertion of our national resolve, and a reminder that military capability gaps between India and China have already reached unsustainable levels. These are widening.

The positive outcomes first. It is hugely creditable how Indian troops stood on these heights looking the Chinese in the eye, never flinching. This was also a demonstration that the last decade's flurry of infrastructure-building along Himalayan borders has begun to pay off.

There is no other way India would have been able to move additional forces - including an entire strike corps with its armour and mechanised forces, ammunition and support arms - to these heights in express time. Continuous resupply and maintenance of over 60,000 troops at altitudes ranging from 14,000 to 17,000 feet underlines the brilliant work done by our government, army, engineers and contractors.

Celebrations done, we must prepare for the inevitability of another standoff with the Chinese in the next three to four years. That's been the rinse-repeat pattern since 2013, directly coinciding with the rise of Xi Jinping.

He took power with the resolve to demolish the post-1993 status quo established by a series of agreements aimed at maintaining peace and tranquillity along the LAC or Line of Actual Control. One reason he felt he could afford to do so was the military capability differential that had grown between India and China.